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Five Hundred Visions: A Dragonborn's Retrospective


Jexsam

1,817 views

Kallista Scelsvir Brander. She was the first character I rolled for Skyrim, as part of a standing tradition I had kept since Morrowind - my first characters must be a sexy, blonde, blue-eyed Nord. What started as a simple teenager's hormones doing what they do has, somehow, become a legacy stretching across Eras. To celebrate five hundred (numbered) screenshots, I've decided to create a retrospective of sorts, showing some highlights of her evolution to the woman you see today.

 

Mind the spoiler - nudes within, as well as egregiously vanilla screenshots.

 

 


The legacy of the Brander name, at least in my head canon, stretches all the way back to the 500 Companions of Ysgramor, a woman of Brander blood being among them. Almost without exception, Brander women are skilled warriors. Their weapons and styles of choice vary, but even those few who favored magic still carried a blade of some kind. Among her line, Anavir Brander, Hero of Kvatch and Champion of Cyrodiil.

 

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But it was not from Anavir's line, but from her sister Nelith Brander, who Kallista would ultimately descend from.

 

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Nelith and Anavir were separated at a young age, their parent slain by Dunmer raiders near Dunmeth Pass in the Third Era. Ultimately, after the Oblivion Crisis, they were reunited. Nelith would discover shortly after that a child she had borne while enslaved by Dunmer slaveowners was still alive, and came to be reunited with her. Where this daughter went from there and what became of her is lost to time, a descendant of hers, a man named Kaldvind Brander, would father a single child, a daughter, by a red-headed and fiery woman named Anwella. Anwella was killed in the Great War fighting for the Empire, which started for little Kallista a lifelong contempt for the Empire. Around twenty five years later, she would finally get her chance to prove her convictions, but it would not be as simple as she had hoped...

 

But enough lore, let's get to the screenshots.

 


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The very first screenshots, and the very last time she would ever wear Imperial colors. But when there's a dragon bearing down on you and no other options, you tend to take what you can get. Everything was in flux here - you can see her with a shield, and even arrows! I'm not sure she ever touched a bow again after this period either.

 


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Fast forward some time into her journey. She sympathized to an extent with the Blades, taking up their armor in honor of her place of a dragon hunter, but could never bring herself to use their thin, flimsy blades. Lydia tags along, equipped with heavy armor and a war axe. She always got Kallista's hand-me-down's as her smithing leveled up, but got her own weapon set to make her functionally different. Having a tank with a slow but decently damaging weapons was often pretty handy. Easily one of my favorite early shots. No mfg, no fov, no lighting or weather mods, yet it still has a shocking amount of atmosphere.

 


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Nudes! Some of the earliest nudes for Skyrim, as well, if I recall correctly. Modders had managed to strip the bodies, but no textures existed yet. So, given I do possess some rudimentary knowledge of photoshop, I did that anyone would do - I ripped the nips off HGEC and slapped them onto the vanilla body to ill effect.

 


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I was pretty proud of maxing out smithing, so early "endgame" Kallista wore Daedric armor and used a Daedric greatsword, but not the vanilla one. Her sword of choice was a modded one from Weapons of the Third Era, an ancient mod from a bygone time. It was weaker and slightly shorter range but noticeably faster than the vanilla greatswords (albeit not matching one-handed blades in speed), so it suited my goal for her build perfectly. She was to be a plate-clad steamroller or sorts, mowing down everything and shrugging off as much damage as she could. And with Lydia tanking, it worked pretty well.

 


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The advent of UNP, the body mod I would swear by to this very day. It was nice to have proper nipples finally. I always noticed the slightly squared breasts vanilla UNP suffered, but I preferred it to CBBE's blow-up doll look and weird, button-like nips.

 


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The advent of Apachii, and more importantly, the advent of pose mods! For context, this is shot #54, from June of 2012. Not even a year deep into Skyrim and already the major pieces were in place. But there was a lot yet to come...

 


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The only reason this is here is because it's another one of my favorite screenshots ever of Kallista. Had this among my rotating desktops for quite a while, but as graphics mods grew more powerful, eventually it was simply outclassed. Also, first non-vanilla face texture! The supposedly non-makeup Coverwomen look.

 


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Screenshot #120 from February 2013, sometime after Dragonborn's release, and finally she found an armor that truly suited her. Daedric was cool, but never felt right. She was a Nord, not some demonic warrior. She kept her sword for a while, but at last she took her next step in looking like the Kallista of today.

 


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July 2013, sometime after the first reinstall. New hair, geared up ini tweak, and finally moving away from the Daedric blade to something properly Nordic. For a long time she carried a sidearm. I thought, it didn't make sense to try to wield a giant sword indoors or in tight cave passages, so I gave her a shortsword. It made sense and looked cool, but eventually, for whatever reason, I simply stopped bothering. Probably about the time I shifted from playing the game to using it as a make-shift photo studio...

 


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Finally, I discovered the second mos critical tool a player can use for screenshots - setfov. Also, while not the earliest, perhaps one of my favorite stages of playing with the "Barbarian Kallista" idea. It's not who she really is, but it's a fun look for her to play with, and not a bad look for her at all. She'll always be a plate girl at heart, though.

 


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And soon after, the most important tool a player can use for screenshots - mfg commands. Early on I was kind of an asshole to people complaining about it getting patched out. Boy was I wrong about that one - it's damn near the lifeblood of any screenshot worth its salt an can elevate even vanilla stuff to good levels if done right. (I maintain my stance on FaceLight. >:C )

 


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We near her modern look even more in this shot from 2014, #264. In just three years I passed the halfway mark, and took another four to finally break it. Here with her knight's greatsword, Stormlord armor, and bear fur cloak, she faces down a fearsome frost dragon. One, a predator hungering for victory, and the other, a dragon.

 


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Stormcloak style Kallista deals with the Empire the best way she knows how - with a bigass sword.

 


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Over two years after the previous image, this one from April 12 of 2016 (almost exactly a year!) finally found the near-final look for Barbarian Kallista. This would also be one of the last shots with that body and face texture combo. I upgraded to SG skin textures pretty much immediately after.

 


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The second reinstall, a pic from an aborted story project. Kallista dons iron armor and a simple cloak to delve for only the third time in her existence as a character into Bleak Falls Barrow to start her journey of the Voice once more.

 


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You've probably seen this one, as it's pretty recent. But it's important, because finally, after years of holding off, I finally ran with a 7B body. I always knew it would suit Kallista better, but held off because it absolutely did not suit Selune, Eldawen, or almost any of my other female characters. That is... until I installed UUNP. Late to the party on that, it makes to so all I have to do is remember to re-generate the body I need based on the character I want to run, plus I can customize their outfits for their bodies. Selune is never going to wear a dragonbone bikini anyway, so why not?

 


All of this leading up to the 500th image. You've probably already seen it in the Counterparts thread, but a retrospective in honor of the 500th wouldn't be complete if I didn't cap it off with that very shot. So, thanks for reading if you bothered to get this far, and enjoy. I don't know how many more I'll do, but I know I'll at least try to keep going. God knows, I'm sure as hell not done yet!

 


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Now that's a journey worthy of a grand Dragonborn. Wonderfully complex and thought out back story, as with your characters we've heard about so far. That takes creativity and commitment not too many may have.

Looking forward to seeing more, and glad to hear you're here to stay. 

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That was awesome to read. I grew up playing the Elder Scrolls on console and never had an experience like you did. Maybe I can compare when you hit that 1000th photo mark? Haha. In all seriousness though, I am glad to hear that you're still going strong. Keep up the great work!

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